is explained by
misunderstood Greek or Sanskrit words in no way connected with robbery,
we shall show that the myth of the theft of fire occurs where no Greek or
Sanskrit words were ever spoken. _There_, we shall show, the myth arose
from simple inevitable human ideas. We shall therefore doubt whether in
Greece a common human myth had a singular cause--in a 'disease of
language.'

It is with no enthusiasm that I take the opportunity of Mr. Max Muller's
reply to me 'by name.' Since Myth, Ritual, and Religion (now out of
print, but accessible in the French of M. Marillier) was published, ten
years ago, I have left mythology alone. The general method there adopted
has been applied in a much more erudite work by Mr. Frazer, The Golden
Bough, by Mr. Farnell in Cults of the Greek States, by Mr. Jevons in his
Introduction to the History of Religion, by Miss Harrison in explanations
of Greek ritual, by Mr. Hartland in The Legend of Perseus, and doubtless
by many other writers. How much they excel me in erudition may be seen
by comparing Mr. Farnell's passage on the Bear Artemis {0e} with the
section on her in this volume.

Mr. Max Muller observes that 'Mannhardt's mythological researches have
never been fashionable.' They are now very much in fashion; they greatly
inspire Mr. Frazer and Mr. Farnell. 'They seemed to me, and still seem
to me, too exclusive,' says Mr. Max Muller. {0f} Mannhardt in his second
period was indeed chiefly concerned with myths connected, as he held,
with agriculture and with tree-worship. Mr. Max Muller, too, has been
thought 'exclusive'--'as teaching,' he complains, 'that the whole of
mythology is solar.' That reproach arose, he says, because 'some of my
earliest contributions to comparative mythology were devoted exclusively
to the special subject of solar myths.' {0g} But Mr. Max Muller also
mentions his own complaints, of 'the omnipresent sun and the inevitable
dawn appearing in ever so many disguises.'

Did they really appear? Were the myths, say the myths of Daphne, really
solar? That is precisely what we hesitate to accept. In the same way
Mannhardt's preoccupation with vegetable myths has tended, I think, to
make many of his followers ascribe vegetable origins to myths and gods,
where the real origin is perhaps for ever lost. The corn-spirit starts
up in most unexpected places. Mr. Frazer, Mannhardt's disciple, is very
severe on solar theories of Osiris, and connects that god w